Girls united in plea for new football pitch
A successful Renfrewshire girls’ football team that is outgrowing its training grounds is calling on the council to invest more in local sports facilities.
Houston United girls use the Astro pitch at Gryffe High School, in Houston, for weekly training sessions.
However, the team currently has around 80 girls aged between five to 15 all crammed in to the “threadbare” pitch and if a new facility isn’t found as club members continue to increase the club will have to “knock youngsters back.”
Club coach and chairman Louis Jeffrey said: “In the last few years, our girls section has grown quite rapidly with kids from all over Renfrewshire joining all the time.
“But that means we have about 400 members across all sections, all sharing one thread-bare, 20-year-old Astro pitch.
“Normally the pitch would be used for about 20 girls, but we are squeezing around 80 on.
“Girls are travelling from Lochwinnoch, Kilmacolm and Erskine to train here with us and if we keep gaining interest then we may need to stop taking on new girls and that’s the last thing we want to be doing.”
Next to the Astro pitch where Houston United train there is a red blaes pitch, which the club feels would be the perfect location for training if the council invested in developing it in to a multisports pitch.
Louis added: “Locally, all our football pitches are saturated by the local teams.
“We only charge £20 per month and that gets around eight training sessions and four matches.
“We don’t want to have a money barrier to sport, there’s enough barriers we are facing and we want the girls to stay in the sport for decades.
“But because we only charge £20 we don’t have the funds for infrastructure, so we do really need some sort of help from the council.
“I’m now at the stage that I can’t plan beyond next year and if I can’t find facilities within the next year I’m going to have to start dismissing the under-9s and 7s and say ‘Sorry there’s no space for you’.
“That would take 40 kids away from a sport they’ve fell in love with.
“It’s great we have so many kids involved but the council seem disinterested in helping us and clubs across Renfrewshire with new infrastructure and facilities.”
Back in 2019, Old Firm legends Neil Lennon and Walter Smith put their rivalries aside as they backed a campaign to upgrade the sports pitch at Gryffe High School.
The two big names recorded footage urging people to sign a petition which called for investment in the red blaes pitch at the Houston school.
The pair were the latest big names to back the cause, following in the footsteps of Rangers and Scotland legend Ally McCoist who lives in Bridge of Weir, James Nesbitt and Brian O’Driscoll.
At the time, Renfrewshire Council pledged to inspect all red blaes pitches in Renfrewshire, with a view to potentially upgrading the outdated surfaces.
Renfrewshire Council has been approached for comment.